Willie Nelson Headlining Concert Promoting Legalization of Marijuana

Mandy @ Gone Hollywood | Friday, August 10, 2007

Willie Nelson Headlining Concert Promoting Legalization of Marijuana - PIC

Willie Nelson has been smoking pot forever, and now he’s the headliner at a weekend concert organized to promote the legalization of marijuana. Proceeds from the show will go to four marijuana policy reform groups. Nelson helped bring the groups together for the first time to strengthen their lobbying efforts to legalize marijuana.

“I’d like to see it taxed and regulated and looked upon as nothing more or less dangerous than alcohol or cigarettes,” Nelson said.

Concert promotors barely mentioned the marijuana aspect and focused on the music, but advertisers still stayed away.

“Because it’s illegal, and once you admit smoking it, you have committed to a crime,” Nelson said. “Somewhere there’s a stigma attached to it.”

Nelson is standing up against that stigma. He said he’s given up alcohol and cigarettes, but not the pot. But he wasn’t always this way.

“With age you get a little more nerve.”

“What’s a guy like me who smoked for 50 years. If I’m running into the walls or making a lot of bad decisions, but I do a two-hour show every night and remember 40 or 50 songs, so I challenge anyone out there. You might tie it, but I doubt you can beat it.”

“I don’t recommend anything for children, cause you need to let your lungs and mind develop, but once you get to be 74 years old, I don’t think anyone should tell you what to do,” Nelson said.